The Mummy's Hand (1940)

The Mummy's Hand (1940) is a fun flick follow up but not sequel Universal Classic Monsters US horror chiller mummy film directed by Christy Cabanne and produced by Ben Pivar, about the ancient Egyptian mummy of Kharis (played by Tom Tyler), who is kept alive with a brew of tana leaves by The High Priest (played by Eduardo Ciannelli) and his successor Andoheb (played by George Zucco), which used stock shots taken from The Mummy (1932), leftover sets from James Whale's film Green Hell (1940), and musical scores almost entirely lifted from Son of Frankenstein (1939). Wallace Ford and Cecil Kellaway play incredible acting roles keeping the show going, indeed this may even be a Kellaway classic. 

Invisible Agent (1942)

Invisible Agent (1942) is a Universal Monsters classic media franchise fake news erotic propaganda wartime horror comedy heroism anti-Axis adventure movie, charged with spookery, xenophobia, and not just a crazed fantasy of an invisible man behind enemy lines, but enemy lines behind which the Nazis and Japanese co-operate and compete as violent evil-doers.

The usual invisible man style of comedy is present and so of course he smokes a cigarette, as well as trying out some great new trick effects, such as changing out of his clothes mid air to land in 1942 Germany naked and invisible, as well as a cold cream application in order to reveal himself.

The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) is a Universal horror Frankenstein-franchise 'Monster Factory' resurrected monster horror drama villager thriller starring Lon Chaney Jr, Bela Lugosi, Evelyn Ankers and Lionel Atwill. 

An otherwise tale of perpetual and repeated and universal rejection, The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) is a class-act movie yarn of mob activity, superstition in the imaginary Eurowald of Hollywood, and possibly one of the finer expressions of the villager mob experience in all of the Golden Age horror cycling, while also undertaking some monster streamlining as the franchises developed, and as they simultaneously migrated into an increasingly cheaper sound stage reproduction of the monster infected olde worlde which appears increasingly foggy-floored and foggily-lored.

Illegal Entry (1949)

Illegal Entry (1949) is an unlawful residence Truman-era illicit Mexican border immigrant smuggling operation film noir directed by Frederick De Cordova and starring Howard Duff, Märta Torén and George Brent.

The later 1940s and early 1950s were a unique era in American cinema, where the intersection of real-world fears and Hollywood's hunger for drama gave birth to a distinct genre: the semi-documentary. 

These films, often based on espionage and FBI cases, served not only as entertainment but also as propaganda, reinforcing the public's trust in federal agencies at the dawn of the Cold War. 

The Sleeping City (1950)

The Sleeping City (1950) is an undercover cop murder metropolitan hospital criminal nurse film noir starring Richard Conte and Coleen Gray, and directed by George Sherman.

Less well known than many inferior film noirs, The Sleeping City does offer a disturbing vision of one of the world's most famous hospitals — Bellevue in New York — in which black market drugs are smuggled out of the hospital in a sting and scam gambling operation.

Richard Conte is the cop who goes undercover, after some suitable screening, and his investigations bring him into contact with a rugged elderly elevator operator, a tormented roommate, and a mysteriously criminal nurse. an authority figure — here the actor Richard Conte — offers some message of public authority and often warning.

Abandoned (1949)

Abandoned (1949) is a journalism and media baby-adoption-ring female seeker hero film noir from high into the classic years of all out full fat noir, remaining a mean wittaw crime flick that slithers through the back alleys of corruption like a grifter on the lam. 

It’s got all the dirty fingerprints of a real noir—shadows thick as cigarette smoke, dames in trouble, and heels looking to make a fast buck off somebody else's misery.

It kicks off when Paula Considine (Gale Storm) hits Los Angeles looking for her missing sister. The cops? They don’t care. But a wisecracking newshound named Mark Sitko (Dennis O’Keefe) smells a rat, and soon they’re knee-deep in a baby-smuggling racket run by a smooth operator with ice in his veins, played by the ever-slick Raymond Burr. 

He’s got an adoption scam so tight it squeaks, selling newborns like hot merchandise, and anyone who gets in his way winds up floating face-down in the Los Angeles River.

The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945)

The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945) is a jealous invalid-sister paranoid woman small town family murder plot movie which takes the film noir style and its themes off of the city streets and into the middle class homes of a dull New Hampshire mill town.

Historical classical and purest high period Golden Age film noir does have a slight craze for mid century small town mill-centred drama. There are more than a few mill-town noirs. Among The Living (1941) is a classic mill-town noir, as is the amazing Bette Davis noir Beyond The Forest (1949). Purely classic mill town film noir

The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945) and any article about it, or discussion of its noir propensities must always come with an extra spoiler warning, extra to the universal spoiler warning of this website, and your every day moment of film exploration will be shattered if you have not seen this film noir and continue reading this.

This Island Earth (1955)

This Island Earth (1955) is a classic nineteen-fifties sci-fi adventure monster interplanetary interocitor movie with neither film noir style nor qualities to speak of, but which yet speaks of the Cold War, the connection between pulp fiction and the cinema and the invention of styles and sciences new in the storytelling of the period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, that started in 1947, two years after the end of World War II, and lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and has film noir elements and connections in more than enough areas of style and production for it to pass unnoticed by an serious noireau looking at the year of 1955 in the United States. This island earth could take it no more.

The Wolfman (1941)

The Wolfman (1941) is a Universal horror cycle classic lycanthrope thriller adventure amalgamation of Gothic ambience and psychological film making which juxtaposes the primal and the civilized within a tragically cursed protagonist who goes on to play in a variety of non-threatening carnival of monsters-style of movies, while cycling into the larger culture notions of monsterism coded with what in film noir terms could be a kind of gothic Überwald mis en scene.

Exploring the fragility of human identity through lycanthropic metamorphosis, The Wolfman (1941) has become one of the more indelible stopping points in the narratives of horror lore, not so much creating horror as such, but forming a solid concrete base upon which to build the identity of this genre.

Hold Back Tomorrow (1955)

Hold Back Tomorrow (1955) is a serious but strange outré death row doomed couple fantasy film noir about two lost romantic souls converging in the darkest of circumstances.

In a dramatic move so odd it could only materialise in the liberally weird machination fantasies of the Hollywood machine in the death-of-film-noir period, which ranges across the five years between 1955 and 1960, a condemned man is offered the chance to have whatever he so desires, under the law, offering a crazed film premise that only a bluff and wild film noir producer in the 1950s could never refuse.

Borderline (1950)

Borderline (1950) is an undercover female cop narcotic smuggling romantic copper couple on the run chase caper noir starring Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor as undercover narcotic cops on the job in Mexico, unaware that each of the other is an undercover narcotic cop on the job in Mexico.

A gentle noir, with no profound moments of existential threat, anxiety, peril nor paranoia, Borderline (1950) is an undecided film noir, capering with the caper format at times and nudging on occasion into comedy, especially as it adopts and parades a standard series of idle Mexicana, example in the made up typecast stereo of the bumbling sombrero and the old "Si senor" routine, which blocks out the light at every turn in this cheapish escapade.

Naked Alibi (1954)

Naked Alibi (1954) is a cop on the edge psycho killer chase thriller that endeavours to spill the ills of suburban America into the criminal wilds of Mexico, as an unhinged killer baker bridges the merciless and pointless gap between the normative strains of the American Dream and the animal flavours of the real world of criminal human agony.

The two tend to meet flatly in the face of the stylistically drowning form of mid 50s noir, when the residues of dramatised psychologically criminality, portrayed with such fun in the 1940s, turn to sour and serious and usually quite odd and unexplained abnormality, as the noir ideals begin to fade mid-decade.

Naked Alibi  (1954) stands as a testament to the enduring allure of film-noir, even as the genre evolved through the 1950s. The film brings together a trio that guarantees a noir masterpiece: Sterling Hayden, Gloria Grahame, and the shadowy ambiance of noir cinematography.

Woman in Hiding (1950)

Woman in Hiding (1950) is a woman against the world lousy husband flashback murder and female seeker hero film noir, starring Ida Lupino as a wife on the run, escaping from a murderous marriage and finding love on the run in the form of lackadaisical magazine and cigar seller Howard Duff.

Corporate villainy also appears in this car smashin chase and hide thriller in the form of Stephen McNally playing an industry boss who is going to be appropriate screen material for the 1950s, straight outta war and into world domination, starting with mob behaviour in the boardroom.

I would seem from the Wikipedia entry on Woman in Hiding (1950) that not everybody agrees that this is a film noir. The works that are cited are the super-seminal and all-ruling guide to the subject of film noir,  Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton (2002). A Panorama of American Film Noir (1941-1953), and Ian Brookes Film Noir: A Critical Introduction. 

Take One False Step (1949)

Take One False Step (1949) is an innocent-man-accused murder mystery comedy-toned film noir by Chester Erskine, which follows decent upstanding citizen Andrew Gentling (played by William Powell) as he negotiates the criminal backdrops of San Francisco, trying to clear his name from the frame, and deal with a rabid dog bite in the process.

In town for a conference, Powell's character bumps into an old flame in the form of Shelley Winters, and she relentlessly hits on him until he drives her home, and she disappears, leaving him suspected of murder.

It's a murder without a body however, and an ordinarily tense noir setup falls into place and the hacks of film noir will argue that it winds up lacking in the tension that is traded for comedy.

Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)

Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954) is a science fiction horror creature feature monster movie of the most classic stamp,

funny how sci fi invokes religion at the start of these films

A strange prehistoric beast lurks in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. A group of scientists try to capture the animal and bring it back to civilization for study.

This process should viewers care to see it is explored in The Shape of Water (2017).

Saboteur (1942)

Saboteur (1942) is an Alfred Hitchcock wrongfully-accused man espionage and propaganda war-time terror and adventure romance thriller, replete with Americana, American landscapes, oddity, comedy, suspense and tropes galore.

A sheer joy of rollicking war time entertainment, Saboteur (1942) refuses to suffer critiques that it is too preachy in deep pro-Protestant American messaging, promoting the great values of its great self, and going too far in its reaching into the pockets of the nation's moral code.

But this is not the case, given that Hitchcock would go on to film the country, re-recreate the country, give the States such direction and place an immortal stamp on the nation's culture and film industry.

Hollywood Story (1951)

Hollywood Story (1951) is a motion picture industry noir killer thriller historic Hollywood mystery drama starring Richard Conte and Julie Adams, Richard Egan, Henry Hull, Fred Clark and Jim Backus, a high host of noir talent.

The murder in Hollywood trope usually takes a film noir twist and usually with a bit of fun. If it ain't In a Lonely Place it will be elsewhere.

Directed by William Castle, Hollywood Story (1951) takes us on a captivating journey through the glitz and shadows of old Hollywood. In a kind of film noir style, with curiosity and nostalgic tableau. Starring Richard Conte and Julie Adams, this American mystery film weaves a tale of ambition, murder, and intrigue.

It Came From Outer Space (1953)

It Came From Outer Space (1953) is a rock-slinging 3-D alien invasion science fiction shapeshifter blobby monster movie, which dabbles heavily in the film noir themes of paranoia and social threat.

In its day It Came From Outer Space  probably had the 3-D thing as its main selling point, although the whole suburban desert lifestyle is a fascinating vision of Americana in and of itself.

Desert wires carry communications, and the desert man has a wife and a pipe and a telescope in the yard. in the lonesome old desolate west there is a great new threat.

This all-American science fiction horror film, notable for being the first to use the 3D process from Universal-International, was produced by William Alland and directed by Jack Arnold. Starring Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush, it also features actors Charles Drake, Joe Sawyer, and Russell Johnson. Contrary to some claims, the script is based on Ray Bradbury’s original film treatment titled The Meteor, rather than a published short story.

Iron Man (1951)

Iron Man (1951) is a violent rivalry blue collar remake boxing film noir sport action movie, making it to the film noir canon for its portrayal of a man's inability to control his fists.

Of all the miserable movie mugs, hats off to Jeff Chandler who pulls the stiffest and hangedest doggest looks, spitting noir at times and flat out desperate to have his cheeks raised in a smile that will never come.

Better still is the coal mining back ground form which these tough mugs emerged, solid mining milieu not so much Zola as Zoloft as a man goes mad with coal dusts and mania.

Not just coaly but a gritty, hard-hitting noir that'll knock you flat on your back albeit in a beautifully photographed ring, and for fans of boxing noir and boxing movies, this must simply be an underrated and overlooked gem, or lump of coal, whichever way you want to look at it. 

The Mystery of Marie Roget (1942)

The Mystery of Marie Roget (1942) is a historical film noir mystery rendering of an early detective  crime solving story film starring Patric Knowles. 

The story in question is The Mystery of Marie Rogêt written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1842. The film, directed by Phil Rosen and produced by Universal Pictures, is set in 1889.

In 1889 Paris, musical comedy star Marie Roget has been missing for ten days. Police inspector Gobelin is investigating her disappearance. This is side shaving of film noir with the ambience of the old city creating ham where there should may not be so much ham, but also creating tension where possible, in a solid attempt to bring the mystery and the history as one to the screen.

The French Minister for Naval Affairs, Henri Beauvais, a friend of Marie's grandmother, Madame Cecile Roget, and her younger sister Camille, threatens to take Gobelin off the case. Therefore, Gobelin brings medical officer Dr. Paul Dupin into the case.